Performance of the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB was compared to the 512MB GeForce 7900 GTX, which debuted in March, 2006 at a price that ranged from $499 to $500. Production of the GeForce 7900 GTX was discontinued when it was replaced by the GeForce 7950 GT, which is also equiped with 512MB and currently sells in the $250-$275 price range.
Specifications Comparison
Note that the GeForce 7950 GT is essentially a GeForce 7900 GTX with lower core (550MHz) and memory (700MHz) clock speeds and 44.8GB/sec of memory bandwidth.
SYSTEM CONFIGURATION
The test system remains unchanged since its last review, which was of the MSI GeForce 8800 GTX in a mixed-vendor SLI configuration.
High Quality Texture Filtering, 8x Anisotropic Filtering, Gamma Correct Antialiasing
Test Applications
Dark Messiah - v1.02
Doom 3 - v1.3.1
Far Cry - v1.04
F.E.A.R. - v1.08
Notes
Antialiasing was set to "application-controlled" unless otherwise noted.
Anisotropic filtering was set to "application-controlled" unless otherwise noted.
Supersampling transparency antialiasing was always enabled unless otherwise noted.
VIDEO MEMORY USAGE
Under certain conditions, the amount of graphics memory utilized will infleuence performance. This measurement was provided courtesy of the freeware utility VidMemWatcher. The screenshot below shows the amount of video memory used on the GeForce 7900 GTX when running Dark Messiah at a resolution of 1600x1200 with 4x AA. The memory usage that is being reported in this review was the value that appeared after a benchmark was completed on the GeForce 7900 GTX.
Video Memory Watcher
Click Image to Enlarge
Note that RivaTuner also has the ability to monitory video memory usage via the hardware monitoring VidMem.dll plugin. The screenshot below shows the amount of video memory used on the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB when running Dark Messiah at a resolution of 1600x1200 with 4x AA.